Chapter 10 Decentralization Movement became a movement of prison rights in the 1960s and 1970s Rather than reform and improve the prisons mental hospitals and orphanages this movement was focused on shifting to emptying these systems Rather than institutionalizing an individual for a crime and make the person enter a criminal justice system they should focus on in community care and reforms such as community service Labeling Theory was more focused on fixing the justice system and the damaging behavior of the justice system rather than the behaviors of the offender This theory argues that interaction in the criminal justice system can actually create intensify and perpetuate criminal behavior This theory believes that by putting a label on the offender and subjecting them to criminal associations the offender may actually turn to make a criminal career This theory focuses away from the previous theory that more is better replacing formal processing of offenders with informal voluntary community treatment This theory focuses on the concepts of primary and secondary deviance stating that a deviant or criminal act is initial committed for a variety of situation or personal reasons and are usually spontaneous or situational forms of behavior primary but once the actor no longer can detach themselves from the deviant behavior it becomes apart of their self identity and this is when it becomes dangerous because a troubled individual will turn into a criminal deviant The primary intention of this theory is to reduce criminal justice system intervention into the lives of offenders and youth offenders are to be diverted from the system whenever possible Tannenbaum and the Dramatization of Evil is credited to be the first notion of labeling theory He started this notion because of normal youthful misbehavior stating that the process of making the criminal therefore is a process of tagging defining identifying segregating describe emphasizing suggesting emphasizing and evoking the very traits that are complained of and undesired He contended that youth entering the criminal justice system are subjected to a forced companionship with other similarly defined children which results in a new set of experiences that led directly to a criminal career He suggested that diversion deinstitionalization and community based programs should be utilized to avoid putting the youth into the criminal justice system Edwin Lemert introduced two fundamental Concepts that refined labeling theory which were primary deviance and secondary deviance Primary deviance refers to the range of deviant or criminal acts committed for a variety of situational or personal reason Those who commit primary deviant acts do not consider their deviance to be fundamental to their identity Rather their deviant acts are spontaneous or situational forms of behavior In contrast Secondary deviance occurs when the actor no longer detaches his or her deviant behavior from his or her self identity Lemert argued that this shift involves a sequential process of primary deviant acts followed by gradually amplified negative social audience reactions As a result the deviant actor assumes a deviant self identity over time that is followed by secondary deviance which reaffirms the individual s deviant identity Neither Lemert nor Tannenbaum labeling theory contributions received major attention when they were first published but as the 1960s unfolded these writings became known According to Cullen and Agnew this group of scholars argued in their respective extensions of the earlier work of Tannenbaum and Lemert the societal reaction not the offender should be the focus of criminology s quest to determine the causes of crime The federal governments response to the problem of crime therefore was in the application of the war metaphor and culminated in the passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 This act established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration LEAA to implement a national strategy for waging America s war on crime Following the 1965 passage of the act the attorney general created the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance which demonstrated the federal governments commitment to doing something about the problem of crime Subsequently President Lyndon B Johnson established the President s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice in 1965 This Commission created a series of tasks forces that dealt with organized crime drugs and crime and components of the criminal justice system including police courts penology and juvenile justice This commission ultimately published The Challenges of Crime in a Free Society which exposed the view that crime in America will not be remedied by merely expanding the capacity of the criminal justice system It reported that because of the negative effects associated with labeling by the criminal and juvenile justice system reform efforts should be directed toward the development and implementation of various alternative prejudicial dispositions such as diversion and deinstitionalization The 1968 Safe Streets Act was passed in order to launch the nationwide implementation of decentralization reforms and other presidential task force recommendations This act provided major grain in aid program to assist states and local government in efforts to control crime The decentralization strategies of diversion deinstitutionalization and community corrections were the centerpieces of the federal funding of penal reform initiatives Juvenile Diversion programs were the early mainstream beginning of the decentralization movement The President s Commission stated that the diversion is to result in narrowing of official juvenile justice jurisdiction to only those cases of manifest danger The commission specified that the bureaus service can include individual group and whole family counseling placement in group or foster homes and work recreational special remedial education and vocational training services It was maintained that the key of the bureaus success would be voluntary participation by the juvenile and family in working and following a plan of service or rehabilitation System modification specifies that diversion programs are intended to provide police and juvenile court intake staff with alternatives to traditional juvenile justice processing thereby minimizing youth contact with the formal juvenile justice system Although the intention was to separate the